Thursday, February 2, 2017

TEPCO is reporting measuring radiation levels of 530 SIEVERTS AN HOUR (10 will kill you dead pretty quickly) and has discovered a 2-meter hole in the grating beneath the reactor pressure vessel (1 meter-square hole found in grating):

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The radiation level inside the containment vessel of the No. 2 reactor at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex stood at 530 sieverts per hour at a maximum, the highest since the 2011 disaster, the plant operator said Thursday.

Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. also announced that based on image analysis, a hole measuring 2 meters in diameter has been found on a metal grating beneath the pressure vessel inside the containment vessel and a portion of the grating was distorted.

...The hole could have been caused by nuclear fuel that penetrated the reactor vessel as it overheated and melted due to the loss of reactor cooling functions in the days after a powerful earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 hit northeastern Japan.

According to the image analysis, about 1 square meter of the grating was missing.

...Images captured using a camera attached to a telescopic arm on Monday also showed part of the grating has gone. A further analysis of the images found a 2-meter hole in an area beyond the missing section on the structure.

A separate article published in The Asahi Shimbun notes that radiation levels in units 1 and 3 remain so high (higher than unit 2) that TEPCO is unable to investigate conditions in there:

If confirmed, the first images of melted nuclear fuel at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant show that Tokyo Electric Power Co. will have a much more difficult time decommissioning the battered facility.

The condition of what is believed to be melted fuel inside the No. 2 reactor at the plant appears far worse than previously thought.

...High radiation levels have prevented workers from entering the No. 2 reactor, as well as the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors at the plant.

If radiation levels are at 530 sieverts an hour inside unit 2, I wonder what conditions are like in the 1 and 3 reactors, which are described as even hotter?

I can tell you from watching the reactors on the webcams for 5 plus years that atmospheric emissions from unit 3 have never ceased (as illustrated below far right side of screenshot):